In a matter of moments they were out of Nicosia and moving north on the plain. They passed one village after another, monotonously similar, made of gray mud-brick cottages. Each village had one water fountain which bore an inscription that it was built through the generosity of His Majesty, the King of England. In the colorless fields the peasants labored with the potato crop, working behind those magnificent beasts, the Cyprus mules.
The taxi picked up speed again and Mark sank back to his reveries.
… Mark and Ellens had gotten married a little after Tom and Kitty. It was a mistake from the first day. Two nice people not made for each other. Kitty Fremont’s quiet and gentle wisdom held Mark and Ellen together. They both could come to her and pour their hearts out. Kitty kept the marriage intact long after time had run out. Then it broke wide open and they were divorced. Mark was thankful there had been no children.
After the divorce Mark moved East and began banging around from job to job, having matriculated from the world’s worst journalism student to the world’s worst newspaperman. He became one of those drifters who inhabit the newspaper world. It was not stupidity nor lack of talent, but complete inability to find his niche in life. Mark was a creative man and the business of routine reporting cut that creativity. Yet he had no desire to attempt the life of a creative writer. He knew that his personality would not take the demands on a novelist. So Mark hung in limbo, being neither fish nor fowl.
Each week there was a letter from Tom, and it would be filled with enthusiasm and the vigor of his climb to the top. The letters were also filled with Tom’s love for Kitty and their baby girl, Sandra.
Mark remembered Kitty’s letters. A calm appraisal of Tom’s effervescence. Kitty always kept Mark posted on. Ellen’s whereabouts until Ellen remarried.
In 1938 the world opened up for Mark Parker. There was a post to be filled in Berlin with American News Syndicate, and Mark was suddenly transformed from a “newspaper bum” into the respectability of a “foreign correspondent.”
In this capacity Mark proved to be a talented journeyman. He was able to fill part of his desire for creativity by developing a style that labeled him as an individual-as Mark Parker and no one else. Mark was by no means a world-beater but he did have that one great instinct of a crack foreign correspondent: an ability to smell out a story in the making.
The world was a lark. He covered Europe, Asia, and Africa from one end to the other. He had a title, he was doing work he liked, his credit was good at Jose’s Bar, James’s Pub, Joe’s and Jacques’s Hideaway, and he had an inexhaustible list of candidates for his blonde-, brunette-, or redhead-of-the-month club.
When the war broke out Mark chased all over Europe. It was good to settle back in London for a few days where a stack of mail from Tom and Kitty would be waiting.
Early in 1942 Tom Fremont enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was killed at Guadalcanal.
Two months after Tom’s death, their baby, Sandra, died of polio.
Mark took emergency leave to return home, but by the time he arrived Kitty Fremont had disappeared. He searched for her without success until he had to return to Europe. To all intents she had disappeared from the face of the earth. It was strange to Mark, but that sadness that he always saw in Kitty’s eyes seemed like a fulfilled prophecy.
The moment the war was over he returned to look for her again, but the trail had grown cold.
In November of 1945, American News Syndicate recalled, him to Europe to coyer the war-crimes trials in Nuremberg. By now Mark was an established craftsman and bore the title, “distinguished” foreign correspondent. He stayed on, turning
in a brilliant series, until the top Nazis were hanged, only a few months back.
ANS granted Mark a much-needed leave of absence before transferring him to Palestine, where it* appeared local war was brewing. To spend his leave in the accepted Mark Parker fashion, he chased down a passionate French UN, girl he had met earlier, who had been transferred to the United Nations Relief in Athens.
It all happened from a clear blue sky. He was sitting in the American Bar, passing the time of day with a group of fellow newsmen, when the conversation somehow drifted to a particular American nurse in Salonika doing fabulous work with Greek orphans. One of the correspondents had just returned from there with a story on her orphanage. The nurse was Kitty Fremont.
Mark inquired immediately and discovered that she was on vacation in Cyprus.
The taxi began to move upwards, out of the plain, on a twisting little road that led through the pass in the Pentadaktylos Mountains. It was turning dusk. They reached the peak and Mark ordered the car to pull over to the side.
He stepped out and looked down at the magnificent jewel-like little town of Kyrenia nestled against the sea at the foot of the mountain. To the left and above him stood the ruins of St. Hilarion Castle, haunted with the memory of Richard the Lion-Hearted and his beautiful Berengaria. He made a mental note to come back again with Kitty.
It was nearing dark as they reached Kyrenia. The little town was all white plaster and red tiled roofs, with the castle above it and the sea beside it. Kyrenia was picturesque and remote and quaint to a point where it could not have been more picturesque or remote or quaint. They passed the miniature harbor, filled with fishing smacks and small yachts, set inside two arms of a sea wall. On one arm was the quay. On the other arm stood an ancient fortress rampart, the Virgin Castle.
Kyrenia had long been a retreat for artists and retired British Army officers. It was, indeed, one of the most peaceful places on earth.
A block away from the harbor stood the Dome Hotel. Physically the big building seemed outsized and out of place for the rest of the sleepy little town. The Dome, however, had become a crossroads of the British Empire. It was known in every corner of the world that flew a Union Jack as a place where Englishmen met. It was a maze of public rooms and terraces and verandas sitting over the sea. A long pier of a hundred yards or more connected the hotel to a tiny island offshore used by swimmers and sun bathers.
The taxi pulled to a stop. The bellboy gathered in Mark’s luggage. Mark paid off his driver and looked about. It was November but it was warmish yet and it was serene. What a wonderful place for a reunion with Kitty Fremont!
The desk clerk handed Mark a message.
Mark darling:
I am stuck in Famagusta until nine o’clock. Will you ever forgive me??? Dying with anxiety. Love.
Kitty
“I want some flowers, a bottle of scotch, and a bucket of ice,” Mark said.
“Mrs. Fremont has taken care of everything,” the room clerk said, handing a key to the bellboy. “You have adjoining rooms overlooking the sea.”
Mark detected a smirk on the clerk’s face. It was the same kind of dirty look he had seen in a hundred hotels with a hundred women. He was about to set the record straight but decided to let the clerk think anything he damned well pleased.
He gathered in the view of the sea as it turned dark, then he unpacked and mixed himself a scotch and water and drank it while he soaked in a steaming tub.
Seven o’clock … still two hours to wait.
He opened the door of Kitty’s room. It smelled good. Her bathing suit and some freshly washed hosiery hung over the bathtub. Her shoes were lined up beside the bed and her make-up on the vanity. Mark smiled. Even with Kitty gone the empty room was full of the character of an unusual person.